Animal Kingdom

In the opening shot of this tense Australian noir, a comfy domestic scene turns lurid and tragic in the blink of an eye, which is a pretty good encapsulation of the entire movie. An orphaned teenager (James Frecheville) comes to Melbourne to live with his tough grandmother (Jacki Weaver) and his three uncles, all petty criminals of one sort or another. When one of their pals is killed by police, the oldest uncle (Ben Mendelsohn) insists that they retaliate, and the newcomer is pulled, against his will, into the family’s code of silence. Writer-director David Michod creates a densely textured moral universe that makes good on his metaphoric title—and in this case, the animals are perfectly willing to eat their young. With Joel Edgerton and Guy Pearce.
ByJ.R. Jones